Aunt Lucy was still sleeping soundly when Charlotte looked into her bedroom just after seven o'clock next morning. The drug was still working, and she needed all the rest she could get, so Charlotte closed the door softly and crept away. She herself had hardly slept at all, and her one thought now was to phone the hospital for the latest bulletin on her father.
If the phone had rung in the night she thought her own heart would have stopped before she could answer it, but there had been no calls, so her father was still holding his own, and she went downstairs to the hall phone. She was carrying Georgy and when she put him down he trotted off towards the kitchen and the barking retrievers. By this time, on an ordinary day, Aunt Lucy would have been bustling around in the kitchen. The house was strangely still this morning.
As Charlotte picked up the phone Saul said, 'I have rung. He had a fairly good night.' That could mean anything, and she would ring herself in a few minutes and see if she could get more information.
Saul was shaved and dressed, she was still in her dressing gown herself, and she said, 'You get up early.'
'I don't need much sleep.' He had come out of her father's office, but she didn't care about that, all she wanted to know was, 'Is he going to live?'
'I'm no doctor.'
'No, of course you're not, how would you know? I just want somebody to tell me he is.' She had to keep her self-control, there
were things to be done, so she asked, 'Would you mind if we talked business?'
That must sound cold-blooded, but unless she started thinking about something else she could go to pieces. 'Not at all,' he said, and she went ahead of him into the kitchen, filled the kettle and lit the gas, hardly conscious of what her hands were doing, any more than she was of the dogs leaping around her.
'I would like you to explain,' she said in a high light voice, 'how the firm managed to get to the edge of bankruptcy when everything looks all right?'
Saul had seated himself at the table. It was quite a domestic scene, he ready to leave for the office, she still in her dressing gown, as though they had shared the same bed and would now be sitting down together to breakfast. It was all unreal. Charlotte thought wildly, perhaps it is a nightmare and if I put my hand in that flame my skin won't burn.
Behind her he said, 'The business has been losing money for years and your father had to cut into capital. Then, when the capital had gone, and he learned that he had a heart condition, he began speculating, shares and horses. He wanted to provide for you, to leave you comfortably off.' He didn't think she was worth such a sacrifice, and neither did she, and if she had known what was happening she would have stopped it.
She didn't look at Saul. She stood with her back to the table, waiting for the kettle to boil, arms folded and fingers gripping. 'He wasn't lucky?' she said.
'You could say that. Not in his investments nor his daughter.'
'So you bought us out? And as we were on the rocks I'm sure you got us cheap. Do we have any money?'
'I doubt it. There were debts to be met.'
'Well, well.' So they were broke, but it hardly seemed to matter.
The kettle screamed and she went through the motions of making tea, slowly, as though this was a demonstration, and behind her Saul said, 'Do you understand what I'm telling you?'
She fetched milk from the fridge, and poured it into two of the three cups that Aunt Lucy had put here last night when she laid the table for breakfast. That would be before Charlotte's father collapsed. 'Oh God,' prayed Charlotte, 'let my father come home.'
She said, 'Sure I understand, but hearing we're poor seems much less important than whether my father will come home again. I suppose—' the thought struck her as she was pouring the tea and suddenly her hand was unsteady, 'I suppose we do have a home? I mean, was this part of his capital?'
'The house and grounds are mortgaged to the hilt,' said Saul.
Charlotte put down the teapot quickly. A great weight seemed to have descended on her. She knew now how her father had felt, standing at her bedroom window last night, shoulders and head bowed. She asked, 'To you?'
'No.'
'That means we'll have to get out, because we can't meet big mortgage repayments. We probably couldn't manage the upkeep anyway—rates, electricity.' Her hair felt heavy as a helmet and she pushed it back from her forehead and winced. She had thought she was lucky not going through the windscreen, and she was, but more bad luck was waiting for her than she would have believed possible.
If they had no home, no money, where was she going to take her father?
She said, 'The furniture?' She looked through the door leading into the hall and the other rooms. 'Does that still belong to us? Nothing's gone. You can't take out a mort-gage on furniture, can you?'
'No,' he said, 'but—'
'But someone could buy it and not have taken it away yet?' 'Yes.'
'You?' He nodded. 'How was that done?' 'A valuer, an agreed price.'
Her father had been selling everything for her sake. Gambling to make her future secure and losing everything. He had been such a fool, and all because he loved her. She said shakily, 'I suppose the final gamble was me, that I'd find myself a rich husband. No wonder he couldn't have me falling in love with a hard-up actor!' She threw back her head and almost laughed, and wondered if she was going out of her mind. 'If he'd told me sooner that I should be fortune-hunting I might have managed it, you know, because I'm a good-looker. Not much else. The packaging's good, but you were right about the I.Q. and you were right that I should have known that he was ailing and so was the business. Only I didn't. And now we've got nothing, or next to nothing. You haven't bought the lot, have you?
There must be a few pieces left. Would you care to walk round with me and tell me what belongs to you so, that——'
The phone began to ring, silencing her as though a hand had been clapped over her mouth. When she found her voice again there was no hysteria in it. It was almost a whisper, 'Please, would you answer that?'
She followed Saul into the hall. He gave the number and then held out the phone to her and said, 'Jeremy Wylde.'
'Oh, darling!' She almost fell on it. 'Oh, I thought you were the hospital. He's ill, he's very ill, but they said he had a fairly good night.' Jeremy said how sorry he was, and was there anything he could do, and she wanted to tell him about Dunscombes and the house and that she didn't know which way to turn, but Saul Laurenson was listening, so she said, 'I'll ring you later.'
'I love you,' said Jeremy.
'Oh, I love you,' she told him, 'and I'll ring you back.' She put down the phone and looked at Saul and said, 'I'm sorry I started ranting just now. I do realise it's going to be tough, but I'll cope somehow so long as he's going to be all right.' She began to plan. 'I must find out exactly what the overheads are and then I'll get organised. We could do bed-and-breakfast, perhaps evening meals too, Aunt Lucy and I.
She's a superb cook and I'm a good one. I'll spread out what's left of the furniture and go round the auctions.'
She had to keep telling herself that her father would live and she would work and it was going to be all right. 'What did you buy?' she asked. 'What is left?'
Saul said, 'I've a proposition you might consider,' and she stiffened.
'I like this house,' he said. 'I'd consider paying off the mortgage, and taking on the running expenses. I should want to choose my rooms, but I wouldn't be using them for more than a few weeks in the year.
You and your family could go on living here and the house could stay the way it is.'
Only yesterday she had run from the house because he was in it, and now he was suggesting that he should buy it and they should
become his lodgers or his guests, and she was so desperate that she was grateful. Her father could come back here, and she could deal with the problems before her calmly, with the biggest problem of all solved. She said huskily, 'That sounds wonderful. It's very kind of you.
If my father can get well anywhere it would be here.'
'It isn't kindness,' he said, and she thought, No, it wouldn't be, so what would you want in payment?
He went back to the kitchen, a tall athletic man walking through what was soon to be his own property. So long as he doesn't consider I am, thought Charlotte. To keep her family under this roof she would pay almost any price, but all she. had to pay with was herself. A few days ago she could never have envisaged a situation like this, but now as she followed him she thought, I've no right to pride. When he tells me his price, if that's what he wants, I'll grit my teeth and pay.
She sat down at the kitchen table, pulled a cup of tea towards her and said, 'Well, I'm glad you like the house.'
'I always did,' he said. 'I came up here once in the old days. Your father bought some saddles from me and I brought them up. I always remembered the house.' He grinned, 'I was living in a van at the time,' and Charlotte wondered if he had resented and envied her father.
When the two men met again years later, and Saul Laurenson learned that Colin Dunscombe was facing ruin, the change in their fortunes might have gratified him. He could be getting a kick out of owning the business, and now the house. There wasn't much left around here that he didn't own, and she said, 'If you let us go on living here, how much—I mean, what would you ?'
She floundered, and he looked straight into her eyes and it was as though he took possession of her without touching. 'We'll discuss it later,' he said, and Charlotte stumbled to her feet, reaching for the teapot, pouring another cup and muttering about taking it up to Aunt Lucy.
Aunt Lucy woke sluggishly. She blinked at Charlotte, then remembered, and her face puckered as she struggled to sit up. 'He had a good night,' said Charlotte. 'I'm going to see him this morning.' She had just phoned the hospital again and they had told her his condition was satisfactory. She wouldn't really know until she saw him, but she was putting on a show of confidence for Aunt Lucy's sake.
Aunt Lucy looked older too this morning. Her round face seemed to have caved in, and there were shadows round her eyes as she looked reproachfully at Charlotte. 'You shouldn't have gone off like that. He was worried about you, what with the accident.' Charlotte's pallor, and the bruise still scarring her forehead, brought a gentler note to Aunt Lucy's voice. 'You should have been resting, not gadding about. He was asking for you in the ambulance.'
Charlotte said miserably, 'I went to say thank you for the roses.' 'Yes,' said Aunt Lucy, 'well, that can't be helped now, can it? But what we should have done if Mr Laurenson hadn't been there—' Words failed her. 'And at the hospital,' she said, 'when he started asking for you again, Mr Laurenson said he'd come back here and fetch you.'
She thought Charlotte was home by then, that she would have slipped in and gone up to her room, not realising the house was
empty. She didn't know about the phone call. There was a great deal more she didn't know, and this was no time to tell her.
Charlotte said, 'Saul's staying on here,' and Aunt Lucy smiled for the first time and began to drink her tea.
I wonder if I could model, Charlotte thought as she dressed. She had always been told she could. When she had modelled Dunscombe jewellery the advertisements had been produced by an agency who had said they could get her other work,-but even if that was a genuine offer professional modelling was fiercely competitive. Even if she was lucky she would have to be mobile and available, and it might be months before she could leave her father, just like that.
So she would have to find work locally, and she had no doubt that she could because she was prepared to turn her hand to anything legal. She would have to ask around. She had friends who owned shops, hotels, garden centres, a riding school. Maybe Jeremy could suggest something; she had to tell him what was happening here.
She dialled his number on the hall phone and he answered at once. 'I was just going to ring you,' he said. 'Would you like me to come over? I don't like to think of you being on your own.'
She would have liked that, but she said, 'I'm going to the hospital at ten and then I don't know what I'll be doing. It seems my father's sold out.'
Jeremy was puzzled. 'You mean the shop, the works?' 'Yes.'
'But you didn't know anything about that, did you?'
'Nobody did.' She couldn't help sounding bitter. 'Except Saul Laurenson, and some lawyers, I suppose.'
Jeremy said, 'Well, obviously it was getting too much for him. This heart attack proves it was time he retired.'
'It wasn't by choice. We've gone broke, bust. Even the house is mortgaged.'
'You're joking!'
Charlotte shook her head as though he could see her, and heard the stairs creaking under Aunt Lucy's weight, and said, 'It's no joke and I need a job.'
'I can't believe it!' Jeremy sounded as if he was gasping for air, and Charlotte heard herself say, quite lightly, 'Well, that's the way of it. I have to go now, love,' and she rang off and waited for Aunt Lucy to reach the bottom of the stairs.
Aunt Lucy flung herself into the household chores, cooking breakfast although Charlotte protested that she couldn't possibly face bacon and eggs. 'Mr Laurenson will,' said Aunt Lucy. 'A man needs a proper meal to start the day. Your father likes his breakfast.' She placed four slices of bacon in the pan and Charlotte went out to the stables, before the aroma of frying could reach her and her queasy stomach, and saddled Kelly.
As she galloped she wondered if Kelly still belonged to her. If Saul had come up here selling saddles presumably he appreciated good horseflesh when he saw it. If he had been in the market for antique furniture her father might have put a price on Kelly too.
Well, that was one sale that wouldn't go through. She was keeping Kelly, if she had to ask Mary from the riding school to give him stabling. She went fast over the fields, her hair blowing across her face, into her eyes. Her eyes were stinging, tears filling them, and she
let herself weep until she turned for home. Then there were no more tears and those she had wept dried on her cheeks.
Maudie and Tom had arrived by the time she got back. Neither had heard the ambulance in the night and they were both in the kitchen, groggy with shock. 'Who'd have thought it?' old Tom, biting on his empty pipe, was saying dolorously. 'Who'd have thought it?
Nearly twenty years I could give him.'
Maudie was recalling an uncle of hers, who had looked the picture of health and dropped dead, and Aunt Lucy said sharply, 'He isn't dead, he's going to be all right.'
'Of course he is,' said Maudie. 'Mind you, he'll never be the same again.' Then they saw Charlotte and began to tell her about the wonders of modern medicine and that her father would be home in no time.
Saul went with her to the hospital. She would rather have gone alone, but his car was outside the door and hers was in the garage, and he said, 'Shall we go?' just as she was about to say she was off.
They did no talking on the way, but when Charlotte gave her name and the nurse at the desk said that the doctor would like a word with her she turned to Saul alarm. It had to be bad news, there had been nothing else. She might have asked if she could go in to see her father alone, but she was glad enough to have Saul with her when she went into the little office.
Behind a desk a bespectacled thin-faced man gave them a professional smile and indicated chairs and said, 'Now, Miss Dunscombe, you do understand that your father is a sick man.' Get on with it, thought Charlotte. Tell me what you have to tell me. 'But so far his progress has been steady,' the doctor went on, and she
realised that she was still standing and clutching Saul's arm, so she let go and sat down.
'Dr Buckston says that you can provide facilities for home nursing,' said the doctor. 'That would mean a trained nurse in residence at first.'
Saul said, 'Yes.'
'When?' asked Charlotte.
'He'll be in here for at least a week, nearer ten days I should say, and that of course is presuming that progress is maintained.'
This wasn't bad news. Maybe the worst was over and she could start hoping. She listened intently to every word… no worries, no upsets, familiar surroundings…
'Yes,' she said, 'yes. May we see him?'
It was 'we' now. Saul Laurenson was going to help her get her
It was 'we' now. Saul Laurenson was going to help her get her